In the field of the automatic packaging machines, in particular machines for packaging pharmaceutical products into containers, to which the following description refers explicitly without losing its generality, the packaging machines, or the parts thereof, are often isolated from the outside environment, in order to prevent the product being packaged, or their containers, from contamination.
In general, if the pharmaceutical product being packaged is dangerous for the health of operators who work near the packaging machines, it is also essential to avoid spreading of remains or parts of the product in the surrounding area.
For this purpose, specific solutions for packaging pharmaceutical products in a controlled atmosphere have been proposed.
These solutions include apparatuses provided for performing the packaging operation in protected environment, that is for completely isolating the whole packaging machine, and in general the whole packaging area, from the outside area, in order to avoid any type of cross contamination between the product being packaged, their containers and the outside environment.
The above mentioned apparatuses usually include big enclosing structures, having inside work areas with a controlled purity, systems for sterilization and decontamination, and complicated systems for micro filtrations of the air exchanged with the outside.
Since they have to maintain very high isolation standards, the above apparatuses must be very complicated and sophisticated structurally and functionally, and moreover, they are very expensive.